SACRAMENTO — A multistate coalition has filed an amicus brief to support several California counties in their lawsuit against Chevron Corporation, which argues local governments should have the right to hold coal companies accountable for actions that lead to climate change.

NEW YORK (Legal Newsline) – Attorneys for Chevron on Oct. 24 asked the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to hold disbarred attorney Steven R. Donziger in contempt for his alleged continued efforts to personally profit off a pollution scam in the South American country of Ecuador.

In August, lawyers arguing for a group of oil companies submitted a motion to Judge Robert S. Lasnik of the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Washington asking that King County’s climate change lawsuit be dismissed.

Democrat challengers aspiring to become the top lawyers in their states have received financial boosts from Tom Steyer, a billionaire investor and environmental activist who some feel is a driving force behind the recent string of climate change lawsuits struggling to persuade judges to punish the energy industry.

SALT LAKE CITY (Legal Newsline) – United Park City Mines and Talisker Finance on July 27 filed an appeal asking for an interlocutory review of a July 9 order that ordered them to comply with the request for information issued by the Environmental Protection Agency.

New York City and the private lawyers it hired to sue the fossil fuel industry over alleged effects of climate change will not accept a federal judge’s recent decision to throw the lawsuit out of court.

Federal judges continue to reject the efforts of private lawyers who hold a financial stake in lawsuits brought by government officials against the oil industry over the alleged effects of climate change.

A judge on the other side of the country has ruled that it isn’t an issue for the courts, but that is not stopping Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilmartin, and the private lawyers he has hired, from suing the oil industry over alleged effects of climate change.

R.I. AG Peter Kilmartin better hope Rhode Island courts import California’s concept of public nuisance law, since the last time a Rhode Island AG tried this tactic, over lead paint, the state Supreme Court rejected the claim entirely.

The private lawyers who engineered the latest round of municipal lawsuits over climate change hoped they’d found a path through the thicket of precedents blocking their way by suing oil companies for selling hydrocarbons instead of burning them and by citing state instead of federal law.

It was a surprising opening move, to say the least. Arguing for the City of New York in its climate lawsuit against five major oil companies, attorney Michael Pawa cited AEP v. Connecticut, a 2009 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, as “persuasive authority” in his clients’ favor.